Lant St. Apartments   Baltic St. Apartments  
 
 

The new skin acts as a new layer which incorporates the full height sliding windows on the south elevation. These are sandwiched between the new and old layers,and are hung on the external face, allowing an unobstructed opening when viewed from inside. 		  Pear Tree St.   T2 Span House Blackheath Extension, Wandsworth  
   

16 apartments overlooking a small park close to Tate Modern, varying from 1 bed flats to 3 bedroom rooftop apartments. Basement parking is provided and a new nursery space takes up the ground floor area. Uniquely, the site overlooks a neighbourhood park, and also has views north to the city and west to the Southbank.

Its abstracted design resulted from looking carefully at its architecturally diverse context.

The massing has been separated into 2 distinct buildings, with the nursery at street level would enlivening the local streetscape.

 

The north building is taller and is related to the park and the south building is lower, at the scale of local streets in the area. The composition of
2 buildings is important in breaking down the massing to clearly express two blocks, rather than one.

At ground level, the public connection with the street is key in relating the building to it’s context. This overtly generous and open plan element of the building has been designed to connect rather than create barriers.

The facade system is designed as a unified system which can respond to differing orientations.

 

Openings in it are made at the scale of a warehouse door, as many such buildings still remain in the area. In essence, the building could be seen as the negative of a warehouse – the walls are transparent and the openings are solid.

The external full height opening doors can be opened or closed to help control the internal environment.

  
 
The original building stood at the corner of Baltic & Timber streets just south of Old Street. The building has 2 duplex apartments over the upper 4 floors and a street level office.

As planning had previously been granted for the roof extension, the form of the existing building had to be retained. The design is an exercise in turning the corner of a typical urban block. To do this a ‘raw’ aluminium skin was wrapped over the rendered facade.

 

2 stage commission-
Developer commission for shell stage for sale. Purchaser commission for fit-out, including all fitted furniture.

We saw this as our first real opportunity to fulfill some of the architectural ideas developed earlier at a smaller scale. The original office building was a simple floorplate of 100sqm hidden from a small Clerkenwell side street at 1st floor level. The original brief from Squarefoot properties was to double the floor area with an equal sized rooftop extension.

With the opportunity of having a progressive developer client, the shell was designed with maximum flexibility in mind, without losing the possible of making intimate or open spaces within the plan. The as built ‘shell’ was capable of being fitted out in a variety of plan configurations.

  

Bearing in mind that the building was enclosed on 3 sides, the design took full advantage of the southerly aspect especially from the new 2nd floor.

The entire 12m long, 2nd floor elevation is of sliding/folding glazed panels allowing the south face to ‘disappear’. There are 2 roof terraces - an open south terrace looking back to the City, and a smaller enclosed and intimate north terrace.

The second stage of the design followed the commission from the purchaser to fit-out the interior.

  

Taking the opportunity to continue the ideas of flexibility, we proposed a fold away interior space which allowed the entire 2nd floor to become a continuous open space or close down to become a 2 bedroom - 2 bathroom arrangement.
This was achieved using very large light weight sliding walls. When both the walls and the south elevation are folded away, there is very little difference between the outside and inside.

All of the fitted furniture, services and lighting are fully integrated as part of
the design, and act as discreet lining elements to give the necessary storage for open planning.

  
 
The T2 House was designed by architect Eric Lyons in 1957 for Span Developments. The planning of the estate where it is located is a relaxed, subtly ordered landscape which has a pleasant blend of
practicality, sociability and aesthetics.

The Span houses themselves are of a modest scale and generally simple in their layouts. It seems that this may be deliberate, as the full span structure and construction allows them to be fairly easily adjusted without complex new adjustments.

  

Bearing in mind, these particular qualities of the open landscape and through views we sought to reinforce and extend this through the design.

Despite being an extension of only about 3 square metres, the ground floor was cleared to make a continuous space with defined areas for cooking, dining and socializing. To make an immediate connection with the back garden, a set of 4 extra large sliding doors open up. The connection is made stronger by continuing the timber floor from the living space out into the garden, which is seen as an outdoor living room.

   The original house is interesting because it is an ‘everyday’ construction and we wanted to achieve a continuity in this approach. However, in some of the more ordinary internal details we did make some modest distortions in the way they are expressed.
 
Like the majority of London Victorian terraced houses, there is usually little garden space to extend the existing house.

It is common for these houses to have been originally built with a back extension and a narrow side alley. Even though the typical house is adaptable to many differing layouts, it usually remains a version of ‘a chain of rooms off a corridor’. To extend on an existing extension often complicates the house further.

  

The existing kitchen is opened up by placing all the equipment on one continuous wall/worktop and extending this into the garden.

The side alley is glazed over to enlarge the kitchen/dining space, and it is clad in oak, inside and outside.

The garden end of the oak then becomes a seat/table. The doors fold away to make the kitchen and garden one continuous space.